this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2024
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Convincing: How do you convince the unconvincable? (lemm.ee)
submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by jeffhykin@lemm.ee to c/solarpunk@slrpnk.net
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Often we dig our own grave making people "defend" their opinion. Instead of winning them over, we push them to become more and more entrenched in their opinion as they build larger mental defenses against the challenges we present. So I want to hear from you:

How do you avoid putting people on the defensive? (Even though those people had a strong alternative opinion)

What was a time where the opposite happened; all the facts were there, but absolutely no one was convinced by the talk?

I feel like solarpunk has a lot of obvious-once-seen ideas and powerful "ahh-ha" moments. But if we can't convince others to take a glimpse from our perspective, not much benefit will come from it.

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[–] Carnelian@lemmy.world 6 points 8 months ago

Has happened to me, and also I’ve had the rare opportunity to hear back from someone later. We had a very heated discussion about a very hot topic. Took about 2 hours lol, seemingly zero progress. Agreed to disagree.

A few years pass, we’re still friendly, and they eventually confess to me that I did change their mind that night. Just took them a long time to process it.

Basically I took the same approach as the person who changed my mind, which you have laid out very succinctly,

argue in good faith, don't try to score points, provide food for thought if you can, and hope for the other person to eventually find their way to the truth.

I came up with some truly stupid things while trying to justify my ridiculous beliefs. Deserved to be made fun of frankly, but this person instead treated me with respect. People are not perfectly rational truth-seeking robots, often just being a jerk is enough to convince them you’re wrong regardless of any other factors.